“Planning the conference was a wonderful example of trusting the creative process. The Ohio Meadville District’s (OMD) resource development team and various district and regional staff members were inspired after reading the book Not Your Parent’s Offering Plate (the OMD District Executive, the Rev. Joan VanBecelaere, was the one who got everyone reading the book in the first place). We asked around and found several UU’s from area congregations who did fundraising in the non-profit sector, had them read the book, and invited them to sit on a panel for the conference. We then offered a free copy of the book to everyone who registered for the conference. We had over 82 register and 4 walk in, in spite of Ohio winter weather!

We had the panel discussion in the morning, lunch, then folks broke out into 1-1/2 hour small group discussion sessions in the afternoon.

Since we are in prime stewardship season, we quickly processed a rough cut of the video of the panel discussion and Mark Bernstein turned our afternoon discussion notes into a study guide. Thanks to this group effort, these resources are up on our CERG website and available for congregational use. ”

Comments

hi i was a participant in the Akron stewardship event in January and asked the question about sample stewardship materials (ie We need some pledge form samples / masters: from notes). could a batch of best practices materials be collected and posted – pledge forms, packets, stewardship letters, campaign brochures etc – anything that would help a congregation that is re-invigorating its stewardship efforts and wants to kind of start from scratch with new materials? thanks!

hi i was a participant in the Akron stewardship event in January and asked the question about sample stewardship materials (ie We need some pledge form samples / masters: from notes). could a batch of best practices materials be collected and posted – pledge forms, packets, stewardship letters, campaign brochures etc – anything that would help a congregation that is re-invigorating its stewardship efforts and wants to kind of start from scratch with new materials? thanks!
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